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1951 Tragwein/Upper Austria – 2003 Vienna
- Title
- „Einladungsbild“ („Invitation Painting“)
- Time
- 2002
- signed
- titled, signed and dated verso "G. Mairwöger 02"
- Technique
- oil on Molino fabric
- Measurements
- 39 ½×39 ½ in
Gottfried Mairwöger is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Color Field painting in Austria. In 1971, he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the master class of Josef Mikl and later Wolfgang Hollegha. In 1975, the renowned New York art critic Clement Greenberg took notice of the young artist and helped him establish a foothold in the American art scene of Color Field painting.
The oeuvre of the artist – who died in 2003 at the age of only 52 – was honored in numerous exhibitions in Austria and abroad, including New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Bern, among others. Today, Mairwöger’s works are held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Estée Lauder Collection in New York, the Mumok, the Leopold Museum, the Albertina, and many others.
In 2002, Mairwöger created this powerful painting in the characteristic red and blue tones of that phase of his work. On the reverse, the artist’s handwritten title “Einladungsbild” (“Invitation Painting”) is noted. It is possible that Mairwöger intended the work as a key piece for an exhibition and thus as the image for the corresponding invitation cards, or alternatively that it was created in gratitude for a generous invitation extended by a patron. Whatever the interpretation of the title, the atmospheric painting invites the viewer to immerse themselves in Mairwöger’s richly chromatic pictorial worlds.